State

Gov pitches for rainwater harvesting

Governor of Nagaland, PB Acharya, Friday said rainwater harvesting was the need of the hour and called for switching to an eco friendly rainwater harvesting system, which is neither complicated nor time consuming and would result in a wide range of benefits for home or business.

The governor was speaking at an outreach programme for promoting rainwater harvesting launched under his initiative at Raj Bhavan here on Friday.

Acharya said two thirds of the world was filled with water, but humans had deteriorated the environment and was causing water scarcity. He said Nagaland was richly blessed with plenty of water and it would be a good thing if households adopted a method of harvesting rainwater to use during the dry seasons. The governor opined that since most parts of the state receive rainfall for six months or more, rainwater harvesting would be beneficial for the people. He encouraged citizens to set up water tanks and harvest the rain water to address the water scarcity problem in the State. “Water is life, save water for sustenance of the future,” Acharya said.

In his brief address, principal secretary, Piyush Goyal, said Nagaland was among the places that received the highest rainfall but faced acute shortage of water during the winter seasons. He stated that it was high time the people woke up and faced reality and took measures to preserve water by building water conservation and storage structures to ensure a source of water during the dry seasons. He added that this was the first step to motivate people to consider water conservation measures of their own. At the programme, 20 beneficiaries were selected via a lucky draw for distribution of 3000 litre water tanks at 50% subsidy.

Raj Bhavan stated that beneficiaries could deposit the cost of the tank by July 15 so that the materials could be delivered to their respective homes. Five additional names were also picked up and kept on the wait list. Raj Bhavan has arranged water storage tanks of 3000 ltrs capacity. The governor’s secretariat will contact the selected beneficiaries. The last date for collecting the water storage tanks will be July 25, 2018. If any beneficiary fails to claim the tanks within the stipulated period, the benefit would automatically shift to the next beneficiary in the wait list.